"We adopted English as our tongue because it's the most efficient language."-A Zolium Politican explaining to Jimmy "Super Lad" Olsen why his race all speakee English. English the most efficient language in the universe?!? Could it be? Well we did tell you the guy who made the claim was a politician didn't we? From Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen 39 (1959).

October 04, 2008

DC's heroes don't seem to be doing very well with them the past few years, but I am happy to report that the Comic Treadmill has successfully averted a Crisis, specifically Crisis on Earth-Blog.

Perhaps you didn't even notice there was a Crisis. That's how we true professionals handle things. We solve them and save the day while you ordinary citizens go about your business not once having to be burdened with the knowledge of the danger under your noses.

Now that safety has been restored, let me fill you in on what happened.

In my last Prop Stars entry, I admitted that I had never read the debut of the character find of 1947, the Giant Prop Penny, originally published in World's Finest Comics 30, The Penny Plunderers, by Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Ray Burnley, and reprinted so many times that there was no excuse not to have ever read it.

Upon hearing that shameful news, many of you likely fled this blog in disgust, never to return again.

But my buddy Scipio wasn't going to let me sink into a shame spiral. Well, at least not unless he was the one that shoved me into it with a comment claiming he didn't even know me anymore. As you can understand, fear of peer scorn sent me off in a mad dash to get my hands on a copy of this story (my apologies to anyone driving on 128 in Massachusetts the same time that afternoon). And thanks to The Outer Limits in Waltham, Massachusetts (a certified Larry Young approved shopping venue), I grabbed Batman: The World's Finest Comics Archive Volume 2 (2004).

Let me assure you that the praise that the Absorbascon has heaped on this tale does not overstate the case. This is a fantastic tale pitting Batman against a foe who commits crimes whose theme is the penny. There are Giant Props, a battle in a penny arcade, Batman being taken down in ways which modern day Batman, essentially as invulnerable as Silver Age Superman, would never permit (the Penny Plunderer knocks out Batman with a thrown roll of coins), a chilling murder and the most deliciously ironic denouement a comic book reader could ask for.

The only thing the story is missing was a distinctive costumed look for Joe Coyne, the Penny Plunderer. Reading this story improved my life. And it will improve yours too.

Turning now to the scholarly inquiry that I have been so easily distracted from, let's take a look at the three Giant Props used in this story.

But first, here is the establishing shot where readers can see all three Giant Props about to be employed.

TotalToyz and Mag already pointed out some of the defects in Gene Colan's rendering of the Giant Penny in Batman 348 (1982). Specifically, the back should not have had a Lincoln Memorial and the front was mislabeled 1945. In Colan's defense it was the pre-internet era, making reference more challenging and he certainly didn't have a plethora of consistent images from other Batman stories to reference.

Here's the Giant Penny from World's Finest Comics 100 (1959).

Actually this is Superman's attempt to copy the Giant Penny. Superman's wretched attempt. Clearly super counterfeiting is not a skill granted by the Earth's sun to Kryptonians. Where the coin should say In God We Trust, it says The Bad Penny. Any coin collectors out there know which year the penny's logo was The Bad Penny? Did they mean Brad Penny? Or should I safely assume Dick Sprang (or the letterer?) was having fun?

And now for the origin and first appearance of the one, true Giant Prop Penny.

90. Giant Penny

A mere four panels after the reader first feasted his or her eyes on the Giant Penny, Batman uses it to bowl over the Penny Plunderer and his Hench-Pencemen.

Putting on my coin inspector hat, I am flummoxed that the original Giant Penny, drawn in 1947, does not match what my thorough 5 minutes of research tells me that a 1947 penny should look like. Unlike the 1947 penny pictured above, this Giant Penny (you need to go to the establishing shot for the details, the action shot gives only the blurred outline of our sixteenth president) does not have the word Liberty inscribed to Honest Abe's left. Also, instead of telling us who we trust, the Giant Penny has the phrase "one cent", which should appear on the back, not the front, of the coin.

Baffling. The most likely answer is that Bob Kane, or whoever actually drew the story, was just going quickly from memory. As a test, I drew from memory what a modern day penny looks like from the front and back. The result? My penny and a genuine penny are as similar looking as twins, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. So that's my working theory on the discrepancies between the penny as drawn in a 1947 comic book and the photograph of a 1947 penny. But perhaps a coin expert out there will have a more definitive explanation.

There's something even more amazing about this story. If you take a gander at the chronological list down below, you'll see that the Giant Penny qualifies as the first true Giant Prop in a Batman story thus far! Don't get too excited, because that may change as I have yet to review all of the early Batman stories, but wouldn't that be something if the first true Giant Prop was also the most iconic of the Giant Props?

One panel after the Giant Penny rolls into action, the Penny Plunderer and one of his Hench-Pencemen, climb up the giant stamp replica of the first stamp issued in England in an attempt to escape through a skylight.

I call upon the anglophile philatelists among you to point out any errors in this depiction. Me? I'm just glad Batman chose the Giant Penny, not the Giant Stamp as his souvenir from this case. I don't know what the proper place is for a giant Queen Victoria face, but it isn't the Batcave.

Category: True Giant Prop.

Rating: 2 Giant Pennies. I'd have happily awarded the full five if the back side of the giant replica had been adhesive and had trapped the fleeing felons.

92. Giant Stamp Tongs

Tongs? You're welcome.

It must have been fun to be Bill Finger's brain some days. Imagine conceptualizing this battle and deciding that what was needed was a Coin and Stamp Exhibition with Giant Replicas of coins and stamps and then a Giant Tongs for Batman to use as a springboard to catch the crooks. I'm being completely snark-free when I say that scenes like this are a fantastic aspect of comic-book stories and they really get the imaginative juices of the reader going. I would love to find a pair of Giant Tongs I could use as a springboard.

Category:True Giant Prop.

Rating: 4 Giant Pennies. If there had been a "boing" sound effect, I would have awarded the full five.

Batman Stories Scrutinized By the Self-Appointed Experts At The Comic Treadmill For Use Of Giant Props